Gemas

Gemas (102.615E
2.578N)
was the location of the key rail
junction in southern Malaya,
where the line from Kota
Baharu met the main line along the southwest coast of the
peninsula. Because of its obvious importance, Bennett deployed
the bulk of his force around Gemas with the intention of ambushing the advancing Japanese. Only the green 45
Indian Brigade was place to cover the coastal plain to the
west.

The ambush was centered around Gemencheh Bridge,
which elements of the Japanese 5
Division reached at 1602 on 13 January 1942. The
British were astonished to discover that the Japanese spearhead
consisted of large numbers of infantry
on bicycles rather than tanks. The local commander
permitted a large number of infantry to cross the bridge, hoping
the tanks would appear, but discovered that his telephone wires
had been cut. He chose to detonate the bridge, the signal for the
ambush, and the British inflicted severe casualties on the Japanese
infantry. However, the inability to call in artillery fire on the
massed Japanese made the ambush less successful than it could have
been.

The forward Allied elements that had carried out the
ambush had to fight their way back through surviving Japanese,
and, with no artillery fire on the bridge site, the Japanese had
the bridge repaired within six hours. By the morning of 15
January, the Japanese had brought forward their armor, which then
stumbled into a pair of carefully sited Australianantitank guns, which
destroyed a tank and another vehicle (described by the gunners as
an "armored carrier", though Japan produced no such vehicle during
the war.) The remaining Japanese tanks withdrew.

During the two days of fighting, the Australians
lost 17 killed, 55 wounded, and nine missing while claiming around
a thousand Japanese killed and eight or nine tanks destroyed. The
Japanese casualties were probably badly overestimated.

Foiled at Gemas, the Japanese simply shifted their
main effort to Imperial
Guards Division along the coast, which cut off and all
but annihilated 45 Indian Brigade, unhinged the Allied line, and
ultimately led to the loss of southern Malaya.

Battle of Muar. 45 Indian Brigade had been
positioned behind the Muar River,
but the deployments were faulty. Bennett instructed his commanders
to cover a larger frontage than was actually necessary, and he
ordered each battalion to
place two companies north of
the river to ambush the brigade -- leaving them no retreat across the river, which
had no bridges and could not be forded. Two companies were
annihilated by 4
Guards Regiment on 15 January 1942 before the Allies
knew what was happening, and later that day Japanese forces began
landing behind the
Allied line. The next morning, 5
Guards Regiment crossed the river upstream of Muar
town (102.493E
2.067N)
and cut off the brigade. Bennett was slow to react, refusing to
believe that a sizable force of Japanese were involved, and
Australian reinforcements were few and slow to arrive. In fact,
the Japanese landed at least 5000 men and 12 tanks during the
night. The Australians formed a square perimeter around Bakri (102.637E
2.040N)
that was the scene of furious night fighting. Australian
gunners again claimed several tanks, but the Australians could not
restore the position, and some 80% of 45 Indian Brigade were lost.
The brigadecommander himself was badly
shaken by a Japanese bomb
dropped by an aircraft
had had followed a line of staff cars
to his headquarters, then killed leading a counterattack. Also
killed were all three battalion commanders and their executive
officers and two of the three battalion adjutants.

The troops of Imperial Guards Division
followed up their victory with a massacre of Indian captives.
The Parit Sulong massacre took the lives of some 133 prisoners,
while two others escaped to tell the tale. One had survived eight
bayonetings by
playing dead.

Bennett finally ordered his forces to retreat behind
the Segamat River, after launching a furious tirade against the British in front of his
staff. Staff officers later
concluded that Bennett was attempting to create the impression
that the retreat had been ordered from above rather than at his
own discretion.